Strawberry Cheese Pie

Sunday we went to visit Mrblocko's best friend and his family for lunch. They have a little boy who is about 9 months younger than the Blockette, so you can imagine the shenanigans had by those 2 little monsters, I mean children.

I asked if there was anything we could bring and they said dessert. Well, that wasn't specific enough for me, so I weaseled out of them that they wanted something strawberry. OK. Want to know what I didn't have any dessert recipes for? Yeah. Interweb to the rescue! I found this recipe for Strawberry Cheese Pie by doing a search for strawberry on Food gawker.

Here is how my version turned out.


Perty ain't it? If only it looked like this when I served it.
Problem #1: I had to put the strawberries on the night before. Since we were going over to our friends' house for lunch we had to leave right after church. There was no other time to do it.
Problem#2: We had a 45 min or so drive to their house. I tried to keep it as chilled as possible with ice packs, but apparently that wasn't enough.
Problem #3:I think their fridge was on the warm side. With the long drive and the humidity I don't think the cheesecake-y part had enough time to set back up to firm.
Even though the strawberries started to get juicy, and the resulting liquid made the already soft cheesecake-y middle separate, it still tasted like strawberry cheesecake. That was the important part I guess. At least it didn't taste like curdled slimy goo.

Next time I make a dessert like this I think freezing it before a long car ride would be the best course of action.
As for the recipe itself, it was very easy to follow. The only thing I changed was instead of a pre-made crust I made my own from here: graham cracker crust . There is a tip in the crust recipe that says if you don't want the crust to stick to the pan, chill the crust for 1 hour. Since the pan went into the oven cold, it took over 30 min for the filling to set properly. I was freaking out about this at the time, thinking the pie would never solidify and the crust would burn in the process. Thank goodness that didn't happen or I might have turned into curdled slimy goo myself.


Graham Cracker Pie Crust from What's Cooking America
1/3 cup melted unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs or 10 to 12 whole graham crackers*
1/4 cup granulated sugar

Preheat oven to 375F.In small saucepan or microwave, melt the butter. In a medium bowl or a food processor, combine graham crackers, sugar, and melted butter; blend until the texture of coarse meal.

Press into a 9 or 10" pie pan. Try to make the crust about 1/8" evenly all around. If the crumb mix won't stick where pressed them, add another T water. Even crumbs up and make sure there are no gaps or holes. NOTE: If you chill the crust for an hour before you bake it, this will help prevent crumbling when you want to serve it.
Bake 8-10 min. Remove from oven and let cool before filling.

Strawberry Cheese Pie from My Kitchen Snippets
1 9" inch graham cracker pie shell (store bought)
8 oz. low fat cream cheese
2 eggs
1/2 cup of slice strawberry (for filling)
1/2 cup sugar
4 Tbs. lemon juice
2 to 4 cups fresh strawberries, sliced (for decoration)
1/4 cup strawberry Jam + 2 tbsp of hot water

In a food processor add cream cheese, eggs, sugar and lemon juice. Blend for a few seconds til smooth. Turn off machine and add in the strawberries for the filling. Mix well and pour into the pie shell. Bake at 350F for 15-20 min. Cool and refrigerate. Place slice strawberries completely over pie top or around the edges, depending on the amount of strawberries you’re using. Heat up the strawberry jam in the microwave until soft and brush tops of berries until thoroughly glazed. Serve cold.